Space development. Space exploration - The most important stages

One of the most outstanding achievements Soviet science is undoubtedly space exploration in the USSR. Similar developments were carried out in many countries, but only the USSR and the USA were able to achieve real success at that time, ahead of other states by many decades. Moreover, the first steps in space really belonged to the Soviet people. It was in the Soviet Union that the first successful launch was carried out, as well as the launch of a launch vehicle with the PS-1 satellite into orbit. Before this triumphant moment, six generations of rockets had been created, with the help of which it was not possible to successfully launch into space. And only the R-7 generation made it possible for the first time to develop the first cosmic speed of 8 km/s, which made it possible to overcome the force of gravity and place the object into low-Earth orbit. The first space rockets were converted from combat ballistic missiles long range. They were improved and the engines were boosted.

The first successful launch of an artificial earth satellite occurred on October 4, 1957. However, only ten years later this date was recognized as the official day of the proclamation of the space age. The first satellite was called PS-1; it was launched from the fifth research site, under the jurisdiction of the Union Ministry of Defense. By itself, this satellite weighed only 80 kilograms, and its diameter did not exceed 60 centimeters. This object stayed in orbit for 92 days, during which time it covered a distance of 60 million kilometers.

The device was equipped with four antennas through which the satellite communicated with the ground. This device included an electrical power supply, batteries, a radio transmitter, various sensors, an on-board electrical automation system, and a thermal control device. The satellite did not reach the earth; it burned up in the earth's atmosphere.

Further space exploration by the Soviet Union was, of course, successful. It was the USSR that first managed to send a person on a space journey. Moreover, the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, managed to return alive from space, thanks to which he became a national hero. However, subsequently, space exploration in the USSR, in short, was restrained. The technical lag and the era of stagnation had an effect. However, Russia continues to enjoy the successes achieved in those days to this day.

Space exploration in the USSR: facts, results

August 12, 1962 - the world's first group space flight was carried out on the Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 spacecraft.

June 16, 1963 - the world's first flight into space by female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was made on the Vostok-6 spacecraft.

October 12, 1964 - the world's first multi-seat spacecraft, Voskhod-1, flew.

March 18, 1965 - the first human spacewalk in history took place. Alexey Leonov made a spacewalk from the Voskhod-2 spacecraft.

October 30, 1967 - the first docking of two unmanned spacecraft “Cosmos-186” and “Cosmos-188” was carried out.

September 15, 1968 - the first return of the Zond-5 spacecraft to Earth after orbiting the Moon. There were living creatures on board: turtles, fruit flies, worms, bacteria.

January 16, 1969 - the first docking of two manned spacecraft Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 was carried out.

November 15, 1988 - the first and only space flight of the Buran spacecraft in automatic mode.

Planetary exploration in the USSR

January 4, 1959 - the Luna-1 station passed at a distance of 60 thousand km from the surface of the Moon and entered a heliocentric orbit. She is the world's first artificial satellite of the Sun.

September 14, 1959 - the Luna-2 station was the first in the world to reach the surface of the Moon in the region of the Sea of Clarity.

October 4, 1959 - the automatic interplanetary station “Luna-3” was launched, which for the first time in the world photographed the side of the Moon invisible from the Earth. During the flight, a gravity assist maneuver was carried out for the first time in the world.

February 3, 1966 - AMS Luna-9 made the world's first soft landing on the surface of the Moon, panoramic images of the Moon were transmitted.

March 1, 1966 - the Venera 3 station reached the surface of Venus for the first time. This is the world's first flight of a spacecraft from Earth to another planet. April 3, 1966 - the Luna-10 station became the first artificial satellite of the Moon.

On September 24, 1970, the Luna-16 station collected and subsequently delivered samples of lunar soil to Earth. This is the first unmanned spacecraft to deliver rock samples from another cosmic body to Earth.

November 17, 1970 - soft landing and start of operation of the world's first semi-automatic self-propelled vehicle Lunokhod-1.

December 15, 1970 - the world's first soft landing on the surface of Venus: Venera 7.

October 20, 1975 - the Venera-9 station became the first artificial satellite of Venus.

October 1975 - soft landing of two spacecraft "Venera-9" and "Venera-10" and the world's first photographs of the surface of Venus.

The Soviet Union did a lot for the study and exploration of space. The USSR was many years ahead of other countries, including the superpower USA.

Sources: antiquehistory.ru, prepbase.ru, badlike.ru, ussr.0-ua.com, www.vorcuta.ru, ru.wikipedia.org

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People began to talk about such a concept as the history of astronautics in the mid-twentieth century. The first serious theoretical works appeared later, but it was in the fifties of the last century that key events associated with human space exploration.

One of the first domestic theorists of the industry was K. E. Tsiolkovsky, who in his work clarified that accurate calculation is always preceded by fantasy. This is the most accurate reflection of astronautics, since at first it was described only in the works fiction and seemed like a pipe dream, but today it is part of everyday life and an absolute reality.

The main stages of the development of astronautics in the USSR

In order to understand how dynamically cosmonautics developed, it is enough to turn to the chronology of events in the second half of the last century. Famous people who are fifty or sixty years old today are actually the same age as space exploration.

The short sequence is as follows:

The fourth of October 1957 - the launch of the first satellite - symbolized the scientific and technological progress of the country and its transition from an agrarian state.
Since November 1957, satellites began to be regularly launched aimed at studying astrophysics, natural resources and meteorology.
April 12, 1962 - the first human flight into space. Yu. A. Gagarin became the first in history who was able to observe the earth from the orbit of the planet. A month later, the second pilot took a photo of the Earth.
Creation of a manned Soyuz spacecraft to explore the earth's natural resources from orbit.
In 1971, the first orbital station was launched, providing the opportunity for long-term stay in space - Salyut.
Since 1977, a complex of stations began operating, which made it possible to make a flight lasting almost five years.

Salyut orbital station

In parallel with the study of the Earth, research was carried out on cosmic bodies, including the nearest planets: Venus and. Even before the nineties, more than thirty stations and satellites were launched for them.

Founder and father of Russian cosmonautics

The title of the father of Russian cosmonautics and its founder belongs to Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. He created a theoretical justification for the use of rockets for space flights. And his idea of using rocket trains later resulted in multi-stage installations.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) - Russian and Soviet self-taught scientist and inventor, school teacher. Founder of theoretical cosmonautics.

Based on his works, rocket science developed in the initial stages.

The self-taught scientist conducted his research at the end of the nineteenth century. His conclusions boiled down to the fact that it is the rocket, as a structure, that is capable of making space flight. In his article, he even presented a project for such a device.

However, his achievements did not find a response from either his compatriots or his foreign colleagues. Its developments were turned to only in the twenties and thirties of the last century. Episodes of his thoughts are still addressed to this day, so the role of the academician is great.

The surname of the Russian scientist should be known, since for his children research papers relevant in the 21st century. Nowadays, the profession of a physicist-inventor is not so relevant, although new prospects are opening up with space exploration.

Achievements of modern cosmonautics and prospects for its development

Modern astronautics has stepped far ahead compared to developments Soviet period. Today, life in space is no longer something fantastic; it is a reality that can be fully realized in practice. Currently, there are already tourism destinations, and research on bodies and objects occurs at the highest level.

Along with this, predict further development technology is difficult, largely due to the rapidly developing branches of physics.

The main directions and developments of this industry in Russia include:

creation of solar power plants;
transfer of the most dangerous industries to space;
influencing the earth's climate.

So far, the above directions are only at the development stage, but no one excludes the possibility that in a few years they will become as much a reality as regular flights into orbit.

The importance of astronautics for humanity

Since the middle of the last century, humanity has significantly expanded its ideas not only about our planet, but also about the Universe as a whole. The flights themselves, although not yet so distant, open up prospects for people to explore other planets and galaxies.

On the one hand, this seems to be a distant prospect, on the other hand, if we compare the dynamics of technology development over the past decades, it seems possible for our contemporaries to become a witness and participant in the events.

Thanks to space exploration, it became possible to look at some familiar sciences and disciplines not just more deeply, but also from a completely different angle, and to apply previously unknown research methods.

Practical space engineering contributed to the rapid development of complex techniques that would not have been used under other circumstances.

Today, astronautics is a part of every person’s life, even if people don’t think about it. For example, communicating on a mobile phone or watching satellite television is possible thanks to developments in the second half of the twentieth century.

The main areas of study of the last twenty years include: near-Earth space, the Moon and distant planets. Speaking about how old cosmonautics is, we will count down from the launch of the first satellite, which means sixty-one years in 2018.

Perhaps the development of astronautics originates in science fiction: people have always wanted to fly - not only in the air, but also across the vast expanses of space. As soon as people became convinced that the earth's axis was not capable of flying into the heavenly dome and breaking through it, the most inquisitive minds began to wonder - what was there above? It is in the literature that one can find many references to various methods of separation from the Earth: not only natural phenomena such as a hurricane, but also very specific technical means - balloons, super-powerful guns, flying carpets, rockets and other superjet suits. Although the first more or less realistic description of a flying vehicle can be called the myth of Icarus and Daedalus.

Gradually, from imitative flight (that is, flight based on imitation of birds), humanity moved to flight based on mathematics, logic and the laws of physics. The significant work of aviators in the person of the Wright brothers, Albert Santos-Dumont, Glenn Hammond Curtis only strengthened man's belief that flight is possible, and sooner or later the cold flickering points in the sky will become closer, and then...

The first mentions of astronautics as a science began in the 30s of the twentieth century. The term “cosmonautics” itself appeared in the title of Ari Abramovich Sternfeld’s scientific work “Introduction to Cosmonautics.” At home, in Poland, the scientific community was not interested in his works, but they showed interest in Russia, where the author subsequently moved. Later, other theoretical works and even the first experiments appeared. As a science, astronautics was formed only in the middle of the 20th century. And no matter what anyone says, our Motherland opened the way to space.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky is considered the founder of astronautics. He once said: " First inevitably come: thought, fantasy, fairy tale, and behind them comes precise calculation." Later, in 1883, he suggested the possibility of using jet propulsion to create interplanetary aircraft. But it would be wrong not to mention such a person as Nikolai Ivanovich Kibalchich, who put forward the very idea of the possibility of building a rocket aircraft.

In 1903, Tsiolkovsky published the scientific work “Exploration of World Spaces with Jet Instruments,” where he came to the conclusion that liquid fuel rockets could launch humans into space. Tsiolkovsky’s calculations showed that space flights are a matter of the near future.

A little later, the works of foreign rocket scientists were added to the works of Tsiolkovsky: in the early 20s, the German scientist Hermann Oberth also outlined the principles of interplanetary flight. In the mid-20s, American Robert Goddard began developing and building a successful prototype of a liquid-propellant rocket engine.

The works of Tsiolkovsky, Oberth and Goddard became a kind of foundation on which rocket science and, later, all of astronautics grew. The main research activities were carried out in three countries: Germany, the USA and the USSR. In the Soviet Union, research work was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Study Group (Moscow) and the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (Leningrad). On their basis, the Jet Institute (RNII) was created in the 30s.

Specialists such as Johannes Winkler and Wernher von Braun worked in Germany. Their research in the field jet engines gave a powerful impetus to rocket science after the Second World War. Winkler did not live long, and von Braun moved to the USA and for a long time was the real father of the United States space program.

In Russia, Tsiolkovsky’s work was continued by another great Russian scientist, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

It was he who created the group for the study of jet propulsion, and it was there that the first domestic rockets, GIRD 9 and 10, were created and successfully launched.

You can write so much about technology, people, rockets, the development of engines and materials, solved problems and the path traveled that the article will be longer than the distance from Earth to Mars, so let’s skip some of the details and move on to the most interesting part - practical astronautics.

On October 4, 1957, humanity made the first successful launch of a space satellite. For the first time, the creation of human hands penetrated beyond the earth's atmosphere. On this day, the whole world was amazed by the successes of Soviet science and technology.

What was available to humanity in 1957 from computer technology? Well, it is worth noting that in the 1950s the first computers were created in the USSR, and only in 1957 the first computer based on transistors (rather than radio tubes) appeared in the USA. There was no talk of any giga-, mega- or even kiloflops. A typical computer of that time occupied a couple of rooms and produced “only” a couple of thousand operations per second (Strela computer).

The progress of the space industry has been enormous. In just a few years, the accuracy of the control systems of launch vehicles and spacecraft has increased so much that from an error of 20-30 km when launching into orbit in 1958, man took the step of landing a vehicle on the Moon within a five-kilometer radius by the mid-60s.

Further - more: in 1965 it became possible to transmit photographs to Earth from Mars (and this is a distance of more than 200,000,000 kilometers), and already in 1980 - from Saturn (a distance of 1,500,000,000 kilometers!). Speaking of the Earth, now a combination of technologies makes it possible to obtain up-to-date, reliable and detailed information about natural resources and environmental conditions

Along with the exploration of space, there was the development of all “related directions” - space communications, television broadcasting, relaying, navigation, and so on. Satellite communication systems began to cover almost the entire world, making two-way operational communication with any subscribers possible. Nowadays there is a satellite navigator in any car (even in a toy car), but back then the existence of such a thing seemed incredible.

In the second half of the 20th century, the era of manned flights began. In the 1960s-1970s, Soviet cosmonauts demonstrated the ability of humans to work outside of a spacecraft, and from the 1980s-1990s people began to live and work in conditions of weightlessness for almost years. It is clear that each such trip was accompanied by many different experiments - technical, astronomical, and so on.

A huge contribution to the development of advanced technologies has been made by the design, creation and use of complex space systems. Automatic spacecraft sent into space (including to other planets) are essentially robots that are controlled from Earth using radio commands. The need to create reliable systems for solving such problems has led to a more complete understanding of the problem of analysis and synthesis of complex technical systems. Now such systems are used both in space research and in many other areas of human activity.

Take, for example, the weather - a common thing; in mobile app stores there are dozens and even hundreds of applications for displaying it. But where can we take photographs of the Earth’s cloud cover with enviable frequency, not from the Earth itself? ;) That's it. Now almost all countries of the world use space weather data for weather information.

Not as fantastic as the words “space forge” sounded 30-40 years ago. In conditions of weightlessness, it is possible to organize such production that it is simply impossible (or not profitable) to develop in conditions of earthly gravity. For example, the state of weightlessness can be used to produce ultrathin crystals of semiconductor compounds. Such crystals will find application in the electronics industry to create a new class of semiconductor devices.

Pictures from my article on processor production

Free floating in the absence of gravity liquid metal and other materials are easily deformed by weak magnetic fields. This opens the way to obtaining ingots of any predetermined shape without crystallizing them in molds, as is done on Earth. The peculiarity of such ingots is the almost complete absence of internal stresses and high purity.

Interesting posts from Habr: habrahabr.ru/post/170865/ + habrahabr.ru/post/188286/

On at the moment all over the world there are (more precisely, functioning) more than a dozen cosmodromes with unique ground-based automated complexes, as well as testing stations and all sorts of complex means of preparation for the launch of spacecraft and launch vehicles. In Russia, the Baikonur and Plesetsk cosmodromes are world-famous, and, perhaps, Svobodny, from which experimental launches are periodically carried out.

In general... so many things are already being done in space - sometimes they tell you something you won’t believe :)

LET'S COME IN FUCK!

Moscow, VDNKh metro station - no matter how you look at it, the monument to the “Conquerors of Space” cannot be missed.

But not many people know that in the basement of the 110-meter-high monument there is an interesting museum of cosmonautics, where you can learn in detail about the history of science: there you can see the Belka and Strelka, and Gagarin with Tereshkova, and cosmonaut spacesuits with lunar rovers ...

The museum houses a (miniature) Mission Control Center, where you can observe the International Space Station in real time and negotiate with the crew. Interactive cabin "Buran" with a mobility system and panoramic stereo image. Interactive educational and training class, designed in the form of cabins. In special areas there are interactive exhibits, which include simulators identical to those at the Yu. A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center: a transport spacecraft rendezvous and docking simulator, a virtual simulator for the international space station, search helicopter pilot simulator. And, of course, where would we be without any film and photographic materials, archival documents, personal belongings of figures in the rocket and space industry, items of numismatics, philately, philocarty and faleristics, works of fine and decorative art...

Harsh reality

While writing this article, it was nice to refresh my memory of history, but now everything is somehow not so optimistic or something - just recently we were superbisons and leaders in outer space, and now we can’t even launch a satellite into orbit... Nevertheless, we we live in a very interesting times— if previously the slightest technical advances took years and decades, now technologies are developing much more rapidly. Take the Internet for example: those times have not yet been forgotten when WAP sites could barely open on two-color phone displays, but now we can do anything on a phone (in which even pixels are not visible) from anywhere. ANYTHING. Perhaps the best conclusion to this article would be the famous speech of the American comedian Louis C. K, “Everything is great, but everyone is unhappy”:

Cosmonautics in Russia largely inherits the space programs of the Soviet Union. The main governing body of the space industry in Russia is the state corporation Roscosmos.

This organization controls a number of enterprises, as well as scientific associations, the vast majority of which were created during the Soviet era. Among them:

Mission control center. Research division of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (FSUE TsNIIMash). Founded in 1960 and based in a science city called Korolev. The mission of the Mission Control Center is to control and manage the flights of spacecraft, which can be serviced simultaneously by up to twenty devices. In addition, the MCC carries out calculations and research aimed at improving the quality of apparatus control and solving certain problems in the field of management.
Star City is a closed urban-type settlement, which was founded in 1961 on the territory of the Shchelkovsky district. However, in 2009 it was separated into a separate district and removed from Shchelkovo. On an area of 317.8 hectares there are residential buildings for all personnel, Roscosmos employees and their families, as well as all cosmonauts who undergo space training at the Cosmonaut Training Center here. As of 2016, the number of residents of the town is more than 5,600.
Cosmonaut training center named after Yuri Gagarin. Founded in 1960 and located in Star City. Cosmonaut training is provided by a number of simulators, two centrifuges, a laboratory aircraft and a three-story hydro laboratory. The latter makes it possible to create weightless conditions similar to those on the ISS. This uses a full-size mock-up of the space station.
Baikonur Cosmodrome. Founded in 1955 on an area of 6,717 km² near the city of Kazaly, Kazakhstan. Currently leased by Russia (until 2050) and is the leader in the number of launches - 18 launch vehicles in 2015, while Cape Canaveral is one launch behind, and the Kourou spaceport (ESA, France) has 12 launches per year. The maintenance of the cosmodrome includes two amounts: rent - $115 million, maintenance - $1.5 billion.
The Vostochny cosmodrome began to be created in 2011 in the Amur region, near the city of Tsiolkovsky. In addition to creating the second Baikonur on Russian territory, Vostochny is also intended for commercial flights. The cosmodrome is located close to developed railway junctions, highways, and airfields. In addition, due to the favorable location of the Vostochny, the separated parts of the launch vehicles will fall into sparsely populated areas or even in neutral waters. The cost of creating the cosmodrome will be about 300 billion rubles; a third of this amount was spent in 2016. On April 28, 2016, the first rocket launch took place, which launched three satellites into Earth orbit. The launch of the manned spacecraft is scheduled for 2023.
Cosmodrome "Plesetsk". Founded in 1957 near the city of Mirny, Arkhangelsk region. Occupies 176,200 hectares. "Plesetsk" is intended for launches of strategic defense complexes, unmanned space scientific and commercial vehicles. The first launch from the cosmodrome took place on March 17, 1966, when the Vostok-2 launch vehicle took off with the Kosmos-112 satellite on board. In 2014, the newest launch vehicle called Angara was launched.

Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

Chronology of the development of domestic cosmonautics

The development of domestic cosmonautics dates back to 1946, when Experimental Design Bureau No. 1 was founded, the purpose of which is to develop ballistic missiles, launch vehicles, and satellites. In 1956-1957, through the efforts of the bureau, the launch vehicle R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile was designed, with the help of which the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, was launched into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. The launch took place at the Tyura-Tam research site, which was developed specifically for this purpose, and which would later be named Baikonur.

On November 3, 1957, the second satellite was launched, this time with a living creature on board - a dog named Laika.

Laika is the first living creature in earth's orbit

Since 1958, launches of interplanetary compact stations began to study, within the framework of the program of the same name. On September 12, 1959, for the first time, a human spacecraft (Luna 2) reached the surface of another cosmic body - the Moon. Unfortunately, Luna 2 fell onto the lunar surface at a speed of 12,000 km/h, causing the structure to instantly fall into disrepair. gas state. In 1959, Luna 3 received images of the far side of the Moon, which allowed the USSR to name most of its landscape elements.

Sergey Kalenik writes: “There is a well-known paradox - if you are inside a spaceship flying almost at the speed of light, time slows down for you. Such a ship needs only 25 years to reach the visible edge of the universe, although for those remaining on earth these two decades will stretch into 14 billion years.

It's the same with technological progress. Progress is a shock wave, sweeping away everything in its path like a tsunami - if today a person thought of putting on a skin, then tomorrow he will jump in a spacesuit on the moon - what's the difference?

But inside this wave, on board “progress” it will always seem as if we are crawling like turtles. Hand on heart, which of us considers the USSR to be the best state in the world that has done the impossible throughout its history?

1. Gagarin, Sputnik, Lunokhod - hackneyed cliches. Like Che Guevara T-shirts. Space has turned into a boring routine - now there are dozens of people constantly in orbit and no one cares about them. But the conquest of space is perhaps the most exciting journey in human history. Fascinating if you know true story, and not a propaganda picture on TV.

2. I think in 300 years the USSR will look like ancient Rome or the French empire under Louis - an idealistic society obsessed with the idea of progress and mega construction projects, which died under the weight of its own intellect and was then spoken of by its descendants.

How will the USSR be remembered in history?

In total, there were three mega-projects in the twentieth century: the creation of the atomic bomb, the space race and the computer revolution. We won space in a clear way - the American program ended with the collapse of the shuttles and since 2011, “all space” has been transferred to the Russians. Russian is the only official language of space; anyone leaving our planet is now required to know it (oh, it’s a pity Men in Black was filmed too early).

Moreover, everything space technology in the world we are now ours - I bet we are selling fifty-year-old rockets and ships, and in France we are building a new cosmodrome in Kourou, which is a complete copy of Baikonur. The earth makes all its plans for the development of the outside world with an eye on Moscow.

How did the Russians manage to privatize the entire universe for themselves? This is a whole story, fascinating but confusing - sit in your chairs and put on your spacesuits, our flight will successively pass through five orbits.

Space is the backbone of the twentieth century. Its essence and secret. Therefore, the flight will not be easy. We'll take a look behind the scenes of history, politics, art and the world as you know it. In short, you already understand that now everyone will receive butthurt.

First Space Velocity: Space Tourism

3. For the past forty years, reality has been saying no, no, and no to the space exploration program. It turned out that there is no economic benefit, the flights themselves are very expensive and life-threatening, and what is going well (communications satellites, extraterrestrial astronomy) does not require the presence of people in space and is the fruit of the development of electronics, not aeronautics. That is, a “rocket” is an ax, a primitive weapon. This is a dead-end branch of progress and there is nothing more to come up with here. There is not much difference between Chinese fireworks and a rocket to the moon. This is a primitive, albeit functional, weapon.

Therefore, all ideology, all projects, all the drive of the cosmic extravaganza are a thing of the past. By inertia, the space theme will always be interesting, but the peak of the 50-70s has passed. All science fiction works have been written on this topic.

All that remains is tourism and this can be seen throughout space fiction - the hero of 2001: A Space Odyssey is clearly a tourist. And the alien heroine of the film seems to be visiting the pyramids of ancient Egypt. I’m not even talking about Star Trek or Starship Troopers.

There's just one catch. Remember how they didn’t want to let the first tourists into space? I think the point here is that everyone who has flown into space receives a special status and joins some closed club, the members of which do not complain about life. And then someone wants to buy himself a membership in it... just like some moneybag decided to buy himself a membership in the club of those who climbed Everest. But the rules are just that, to change them - tourism is the only future of space, there is nothing else to do there. But to stand on a par with Gagarin... not many people understand what this means.

4. Yuri Gagarin is the greatest person in history, his name will be remembered even when the others are forgotten, because he is the first person to leave the earth. To appreciate this phrase, imagine that our civilization will perish, but what may remain from it is the memory of one person, whose name this will be?

5. Here is a monument erected in honor of Columbus 600 years after his voyage.

No less majestic buildings stand in all countries of the new world. Columbus is their main historical and epic character, like the ancient Zeus or Jesus Christ. But who is he compared to the first cosmonaut? But this is not the main thing. The fact is that it is impossible to jump higher than Gagarin. This is the last hero of humanity. There is nothing more significant than the first flight into space, nothing at all. Even Neil Armstrong stands infinitely lower than Yuri Alekseevich in the world pantheon, despite the colossal efforts of American propaganda.

This is the meaning of space tourism, the attractiveness of space - you cannot go to a new world on the same ship with Columbus and then boldly say I was there. You can't be the first to climb Everest again, or reach the North Pole, or sink to the bottom. Mariana Trench, there is nothing exceptional about this anymore. Space is so far from everything that we have seen and know that a flight to the stars will probably always be a mystical event. I don't mind spending any money on the flight to Gagarin.

But in space, money doesn't matter. This is precisely why Roscosmos, being a space monopolist, simply does not care about the opportunity to earn trillions from tourism and blocks its development in the West for the same reasons as the applicants for space tourists. And without Roscosmos, the very idea of tourism will remain at the level of naive crafts of those same failed tourists.

It turns out that a person is superfluous in space, but maybe a cold vacuum is suitable for war?

Second Space Velocity: The SDI Program and Star Wars

The Cold War began with Churchill's famous Fulton speech. The USA and the USSR spent half a century on an arms race. A kind of war of attrition, when both countries produced thousands of tanks, planes and missiles. which did not even fire - they were simply written off to the reserve to make room for new models. And so on for fifty years until one of the players breaks down.

6. This key point in the history of space, so I will dwell on it in more detail.

In Fulton, Churchill proposed that the Americans divide the world and rule as three - the USA, England and the USSR. America decided to be the mistress of the sea and did not really calculate its strength. For such a decision, the states had atomic bomb, hundreds of aircraft carriers and a fleet of jet aircraft giving complete air supremacy. It seems like world domination is guaranteed...

Only now in Korean War in the fifties everything became clear - instead of an easy expeditionary walk American troops We were surprised to discover that the Koreans had ultra-modern MIG-15 jet fighters - made in the USSR but with English engines. Rate the English treachery - the English units stood in south korea side by side with the Americans, but they fired at them from English weapons, albeit with Korean hands.

The Americans are stubborn guys, with each new round of the Cold War they put more and more expensive toys into the ring, and each time the USSR sarcastically copied and improved the presented samples. Have you built a fleet of bombers capable of reaching Moscow? Khrushchev sarcastically declares that we are making intercontinental missiles like sausages. Missiles that can hit every city in America faster than you can refuel your planes.

7. The Americans wiped themselves off and on June 5, 1961, launched the Chrome Dome program - according to which strategic bombers with atomic bombs were always in the air on the borders of the USSR. However, the B-52s turned out to be not the best vehicles for long duty missions and began to fall. Fully loaded with atomic bombs.

Over the seven years of the program, five planes crashed, the last incident being the finale of the program.

In 1968, a fire broke out on board one of the cars - the third pilot placed three soft foam pillows under his seat, which blocked the ventilation of the heating system and ignited. The crew ejected and the plane crashed onto the ice near Greenland. There were four hydrogen bombs of one and a half megatons each on board - two were found, one crashed and released seven kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium into the atmosphere, and the fourth is still being sought by treasure hunters in the rocks of Greenland.

And the Americans scattered dozens of such bombs around the world - this is where the help for global terrorism lies. The Chrome Dome then had to be collapsed under international pressure.

But in general, this example is indicative - all their other military programs and, of course, the American space program developed in the same vein. It’s not because America has bad engineers or cowardly pilots - they are the best in the world, it’s just that this is not enough for super tasks, they need super qualities - those that lie not in the field of logic or education, but in the very basis of the national character.

By the early 1980s, a brilliant idea had matured in America to move cold war from earth to space. After watching Star Wars, President Reagan announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its essence is terribly simple - we are building a fleet of hundreds of super-powerful combat lasers that will shoot down ballistic missiles on takeoff.

The idea, by the way, is very sound, because missiles such as the SS-18 can only be intercepted on takeoff; after ten minutes of flight, its warhead is divided into 200 parts that are constantly maneuvering and evading interception - it is no longer possible to shoot them down. To lasers - a fleet of Shuttle shuttles that service lasers and can also carry reserves nuclear missiles on board. Despite the Hollywood scale, it was the swan song and the last breakthrough of the states - which led to complete defeat.

8. The fact is that a feature of the socialist economy is its absolute concentration and unlimitedness. Simply put, the entire USSR was one company, and its economy did not have any special restrictions; it was possible to afford any programs such as the construction of hundreds of nuclear power plants submarines, a huge army or an ocean-going fleet - all this without mobilization and martial law.

Let me explain with an example. Under Khrushchev, they somehow became concerned about housing for workers, and within a decade, the majority of the country’s residents received their own apartments. Of course, these were inferior Khrushchevs, but at that time they were a luxury even for Europe. The scale is impressive - 300 million were built square meters housing. One meter for every resident of the country.

So, Khrushchevkas are temporary housing for workers in which they were supposed to live until 1980, when communism came. “Temporary housing” is tin houses for migrant workers building Moscow City skyscrapers. Now imagine the scale of these tin houses in the land of the Soviets and you can imagine the skyscraper that these workers built. With such a scale of the economy, the “shuttle” is one tooth long. The USSR built an entire fleet of nuclear submarines and did not notice it. And one such boat costs as much as the average European country.

9. Already in 1987, the Energia launch vehicle launched the Polyus combat laser into orbit - it was immediately drowned in the ocean, so as not to escalate the conflict - the USSR was then conducting propaganda under the slogan “no weapons in space,” etc. Next year, Buran makes its only flight, and does so in fully automatic mode without a crew.

Unmanned mode is not just a triumph of engineering that has not yet been achieved by anyone, but an unambiguous signal to the states. Indeed, in 1984, a Soviet laser locator “highlighted” a flying shuttle with its guidance system - the shuttle lost contact with the ground, all electronics turned off, and the crew “felt acutely unwell.” Those. even tracking the target disabled the “space bomber”, what can we say about the consequences of a combat salvo?

Suddenly it turned out that the Americans had nothing to catch in space - the USSR had developed its own shuttle in a couple of years and could easily mass-produce it, not to mention laser weapons.

10. In 1989, an American delegation came to the USSR to inspect all these achievements in person and came to the conclusion that it was time to end the Cold War. In exchange, the United States accepts the Fulton proposal and abandons the idea of world domination. Not even 40 years have passed!

But now, without the British colonial empire and the Soviet bloc, such a political system looks very funny - America has 95% military power but it cannot even capture the Middle East. I’m not even talking about the rising China and the EU. He even wipes his feet on Americans North Korea- this is the result of the entire space race.

The third cosmic speed: How we made America

Space is, by and large, a propaganda product. All these satellites and flights had as their ultimate goal the picture on TV. Remember what became the symbol of television? Yes, broadcast from the moon.

11. That is why the real symbol of television is Neil Armstrong.

The world's first artificial satellite - what could be purer, more romantic and sublime than this monument to humanity? To all enthusiasts, researchers, mad scientists and tireless designers who have laid down their lives on the altar of space for generations. But the worst thing about dreams is that they come true.

12. I think the world’s reaction to this event was best described by Stephen King, who became a writer on October 4, 1957:

The first time I experienced horror - real horror, not an encounter with demons or ghosts living in my imagination - was one October day in 1957. I just turned ten. And, as expected, I was in a movie theater - the Stratford Theater in downtown Stratford, Connecticut.

One of my favorite films was playing, and the fact that it was shown, and not a Randolph Scott western or a John Wayne action film, turned out to be quite appropriate. The Saturday afternoon when the real horror hit me was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

And just at the moment when, in the last part of the film, the aliens are preparing to attack the Capitol, the tape stopped. The screen went dark. The cinema was packed with children, but, strangely enough, everyone was quiet. If you think back to your younger days, you'll remember that a crowd of kids have a variety of ways to express their irritation when a movie is interrupted or starts late: rhythmic clapping; the great cry of the children's tribe “We want cinema! We want a movie! We want a movie!”; candy boxes flying into the screen; pipes made from popcorn bags, and who knows what else. If someone has kept a firecracker in their pocket since the Fourth of July, he will certainly take it out, show it to his friends so that they will approve and admire it, and then light it and throw it towards the ceiling.

But on that October day, nothing like that happened. And the film didn't break - they just turned off the projector. And then something unheard of happened:

The lights were turned on in the hall. We sat, looking around and blinking from the Bright light, like moles. The manager came onto the stage and raised his hand, asking for silence - a completely unnecessary gesture.
[…]
We sat on chairs like mannequins and looked at the manager. He looked worried and sick - or maybe it was the lighting that was to blame. We wondered what kind of disaster had forced him to stop the film at the most tense moment, but then the manager spoke, and the trembling in his voice confused us even more.

“I want to inform you,” he began, “that the Russians have launched a space satellite into orbit around the Earth. They called it... "satellite".

The message was met with absolute, deathly silence. A movie theater full of kids with crew cuts and ponytails, in jeans and skirts, with Captain Midnight rings, kids who had just discovered Chuck Berry and Little Richards and listened to New York radio stations in the evenings with such bated breath, as if they were signals from another planet. We grew up watching Captain Video and Terry and the Pirates! We admired in comics how the hero Casey throws around a whole bunch of Asians like skittles. We saw Richard Carlson in I Lived a Triple Life catching dirty communist spies by the thousands. We paid a quarter to see Hugh Marlowe in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and received this damning news as a free supplement.

I remember very clearly: scary dead the silence of the cinema hall was suddenly broken by a lonely cry; I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl, the voice was full of tears and frightened anger: “Let’s show the movie, you liar!”

The manager didn't even look in the direction the voice came from, and for some reason that was the worst part. This was proof. The Russians are ahead of us in space. Somewhere above our heads, squeaking triumphantly, is an electronic ball, designed and launched behind the Iron Curtain. Neither Captain Midnight nor Richard Carlson could stop him. He flew up there... and they called him "satellite." The manager stood still a little longer, looking at us; he seemed to be looking for something else to add, but couldn’t find it. Then he left and the film soon resumed.

13. If the Russians were able to put a satellite into orbit, then America is defenseless against a sudden nuclear strike from heaven This simple conclusion had far-reaching consequences.

The fear was so strong that in the first days of October 1957, particularly hotheads from the Pentagon proposed “closing the sky,” that is, throwing tons of scrap metal into orbital heights: balls from bearings, nails, steel shavings, which would lead to the cessation of any space launches.

But President Eisenhower acted wiser - he did not block the orbit, or copy Soviet space technology, he copied the Soviet system itself.

14. Based on Soviet models, a single NASA space ministry was created, which was finally headed behind the scenes by the German shadowy genius Wernher Von Braun - he was recruited at the beginning of 1943, but it was painfully contradictory to entrust the American space program to the most famous SS man in the world.

In addition to the creation of NASA, another little-known but key reform for American history was carried out - education reform. The National Defense Education Act copied the Soviet system higher education, its meaning was to create a single Ministry of Education that selected talented schoolchildren from all over the country to technical universities - this is how the Massachusetts and Californian universities acquired their current appearance and fame technical universities, Stanford, Harvard and many other universities. Yes, these universities existed before, but until 1958 they were more private shops incapable of solving large-scale problems.

All of them were united by a single “military-industrial-academic complex” and solved clearly assigned tasks - to develop rocket engines or guidance system. That is why American universities still treat Moscow State University with such reverence, Moscow University is always cited as an example, any news from it is caught with an open mouth, and in any rankings of the hundred best world universities it is invariably in the honorable 50th place - it’s just theirs alma mater and the entire American education system are rooted in this building on Vorobyovy Gory.

15. Simply put, the real space race began with this reform.

Fourth space: Have the Americans been on the moon?

A little higher, I already noted that the purpose of the race was a propaganda effect - for some reason it was believed that success in space is the primary evidence of the “correctness” of a particular government system.

It may seem crazy now, but crazy people couldn't send a probe to Venus and walk on the moon. There really are two healthy grains in this idea, I will talk about the first below, and the second is precisely the national character.

16. Don’t think that we are talking about some kind of metaphysics, everything here is extremely simple - Russians are natural-born cosmonauts. We live on the moon for nine months a year and wear spacesuits. Hence the utmost rationalism, even critical realism if you like. With us, everything is strictly logical and to the point, not because we are so smart, it’s just that the conditions are like this - I forgot to put on my hat and died. As a result, there are no fools in Russia at all - they live with us for exactly one year, until winter. All this has its consequences at the global level - Russians have composure, ingenuity and endless resistance to stress.

Watch this video from the space station. It first shows the station's spacious American segments. Then the narrow metal Russian ones - they look miserable, but it is in the Russian module that there is an on-board computer, a bathroom, a docking module, emergency systems and rescue modules. Actually, the entire ISS is located in our modules, the rest are not significant.

When the cameraman enters the central hall of the Russian sector, two cosmonauts naturally sit at a table and drink tea under a portrait of Gagarin. These are the Americans on a space expedition - and ours are here at home.

17. When Leonov made his first spacewalk in 1965, a defect in the spacesuit appeared - due to the lack of external pressure, it inflated like a balloon and did not allow him to return to board the ship. There was only air for 30 minutes, and by this time 20 had already passed. Over the next ten minutes, Leonov received the Hero star.

Without being confused, he realized that there was no way out and caused the pressure suit to depressurize, vented the air and climbed headfirst into the airlock chamber. Further more - during landing the automation failed and they had to land the capsule manually - he and Belyaev fell in the remote taiga, where they had to spend two days - which did not make any impression on the astronauts, they even cut down a landing site for a helicopter in a dense forest.

But the Americans' first spacewalk showed a completely different national character. It’s warm in America, and therefore there’s a southern mentality - when any mistake is not fatal and everything can be replayed. American folk hero is the Big Lebowski and Homer Simpson.

18. On June 3, 1965, the crew of Gemeni 4 was preparing for the first American spacewalk. This was the first multi-day flight of the Americans and the task was too large - to work out all the elements of a long-term stay in space in order to make sure that a flight to the moon was possible and to identify possible problems. And problems were not long in coming - the rendezvous with the rocket stage in orbit failed, Gemeny used up almost all the fuel, and the astronauts began to become noticeably nervous. The task was canceled and they decided to move straight to spacewalk. But due to the onset of a panic attack, Edward White had to postpone this task for the third orbit around the earth.

White was nervous for good reason—the crew had been plagued by mocking engineering errors throughout the flight. Firstly, the Americans failed to create an airlock chamber (!!!) and they simply depressurized the entire ship. But here the main problem lay in wait for them - the engineers took into account the Soviet experience with an inflating spacesuit, but clearly overestimated their capabilities and made the exit hatch completely metal. Instead of rubber gaskets like our ships, they adjusted all the parts to each other with micron precision. Cool, right?

19. On the test bench, everything worked perfectly as long as there was a layer of air between the parts - but in a vacuum this layer evaporated and a super-strong subatomic attraction arose between the metal parts. The door had to be broken down with a crowbar to get out, and poor White became very nervous when, upon his return, the hatch could not be opened for more than 10 minutes.

Poor White died on the ground during the first flight of Apollo 1 - the engineers again made an unforgivable mistake and, to save weight, made the ship an atmosphere of pure oxygen - how they came to this decision is unknown, because in a pure oxygen atmosphere any material becomes especially flammable. Three astronauts died instantly, burning alive in the cabin. NASA management was removed from their positions, and all flights were stopped for half a year.

And this was at the apogee of the lunar race, when the month turned into a year. But who knows, maybe without this failure everything would have only been worse. NASA seriously revised its approach to the matter and began to develop the lunar program much more consistently - first, two flights in automatic mode, then attempts to dock with astronauts on board, and only after flying around the moon, landing. Surprisingly, everything went without disaster and even the infamous Apollo 13 was able to return home.

20. Soviet lunar program choked precisely for this reason - no one dared to guarantee the safety of the astronauts - the technologies of the 60s were too primitive, they had to be duplicated many times, and all this complicated the already unreliable design.

For example, due to the characteristics of the trajectory on the way back from the moon, the capsule could only land in the equator region; in order to land on the territory of the USSR, it was necessary to first make a braking dive into the atmosphere, slow down to the first escape velocity, rise into space again, and only after that go to landing.

21. Don’t forget that at the technological level we're talking about about a Volkswagen beetle that is shot from a huge slingshot. Literally. Here is a photo of spaceships, their size is no larger than an average car.

Or another fact - the Soviet lunar program was four times larger than the American one: first, two lunar rovers with radio beacons and cockpits landed on the moon. Then two ships were sent to the moon - one with astronauts, the other as a reserve - both came in to land at the beacon's signal. In case of problems, the cosmonauts calmly boarded the lunar rover and drove to the spare ship.

Such caution is understandable - Gagarin’s unsuccessful flight would, of course, have caused a stir and greatly damaged the image of the USSR, but still would not have been a disaster - it simply would not have been considered the first flight. The moon is another matter - imagine that the first people died on its surface. This is not just a symbol of failure, it is an eternal shame - they will lie there as long as humanity exists and this is what America or Russia will be remembered for. Such a risk is completely unacceptable, but the Americans saw a chance for themselves and decided to take a risk - they launched their ships without any safety net.

It was not by chance that I mentioned the possibility of Gagarin’s death at the start. This is why almost all the video footage of Gagarin’s launch was filmed after his return. Otherwise, the very existence of such materials would be an extremely dangerous weapon against Soviet power.

22. This is where the legs of the lunar conspiracy grow - undoubtedly, a noticeable part of the video materials from the moon filmed by Apollo was at least retouched, some frames could have been filmed on the ground - a complete copy of the lunar surface, modules and spacesuits were created at the NASA center with ambiguous detail accuracy .

Supporters of the “moon conspiracy” look naive not because it is obvious. “Filming” is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of media preparation for the moonwalk. The moon landing is all that will remain of America in history forever, but it will always be secondary to the first flight. Therefore, in the information space it was important to fulfill two tasks - to snatch as much glory as possible from Gagarin and to have maximum informational influence. Simply put, it was necessary to show humanity a brighter fireworks display despite the second-rate event, and here the entire advertising genius of America appeared.

It’s not noticeable now, but the Americans came in with their crowning number: We speak on behalf of all humanity, not America. Kennedy initially suggested that Khrushchev fly to the moon together, Armstrong should also plant the UN flag, and next to the flag leave a sign with messages from the leaders of 73 countries on earth. The State Commission on the symbolism of the Apollo 11 flight met for 6 months, its result was the following decision (I will give the entire list):

Only the US flag will be unfurled on the moon. Small flags of the 135 UN member countries, as well as the United Nations itself and all US states and territories, will be carried in the lunar module and returned to Earth.

23. The flag of the USSR that flew to the moon with Apollo 11 and pieces of lunar soil donated to the Soviet Union by the Americans and exhibited in memorial museum astronautics at VDNKh in Moscow.

It was also planned to send two full-size US flags on the flight with a return flight, which the fighter would first fly over both buildings of the US Congress (they were supposed to be in the command module at all times), a special postmark for cancellation, a “moon letter” in the form of an envelope with a sample a stamp that will be canceled by the crew during the flight, and a cliche for subsequent printing of the commemorative stamp “The First Man on the Moon.”

In addition to the flag, two more objects were supposed to remain on the Moon: a small silicon disk with a diameter of 3.8 cm with miniature statements of US Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, goodwill messages from leaders or representatives of 73 states, the names of the leaders of the US Congress and members of the four congressional committees responsible for enacting NASA-related laws and the names of senior NASA officials, active and retired, as well as a commemorative metal plaque affixed to one of the Eagle landing stage legs. It depicted both hemispheres of the Earth, oceans and continents without state borders. Below is the text:

The plate was engraved with the signatures of all three crew members and US President Richard Nixon.

The commission also decided that emotions need to be added to the flight, so astronauts can take personal items with them on the flight. Armstrong's personal belongings included a wooden fragment of the left propeller and a piece of fabric from the left upper wing of the Wright brothers' Flyer. Aldrin, at the request of his father, took with him a miniature (5 cm x 7.6 cm in size) autobiography of the “American Tsiolkovsky” Robert Goodard, published in 1966. It became the first book to land on the moon.

25. Someone forgot his family on the moon

The scenarios of all television broadcasts on the ground, the flight emblem, all names and call signs were thought out in detail. There shouldn't be anything stupid or comical about an epic flight. And on the moon, Buzz Aldrin performed a Catholic communion service.

I accepted the holy gifts and gave thanks to the mind and spirit that carried the two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. Interesting, I thought, because the very first drink and the very first food served on the Moon was wine and communion bread.

After the flight, Aldrin returned the miniature chalice to Webster Church. Every year on the Sunday closest to July 20, local parishioners there take part in the Lunar Eucharist service. Also in the pockets of the astronauts' suits were the Apollo 1 emblem, commemorative medals of Virgil Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee, Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, a small golden olive branch, the same as the other three, which the astronauts would bring to their wives, and silicon disk with messages from presidents. All this was left at the lunar module landing site. With all this, the crew of Apollo 11 had only one off-ship camera. Therefore, studio “imitations” were shown on American television so that viewers could better imagine the exit process itself.

But have you ever wondered what the results of the Apollo mission were?

Yes, the Americans overtook us at the cost of enormous risk, but the Apollo program had to be curtailed quite quickly - it turned out that there was nothing to do on the moon, the technology of the sixties did not even allow one to stay on the surface for a couple of days.

26. From the heights of today, it is clear that the space race was about forty years ahead of its time. Like an atomic bomb. The very early flight in the era of punched cards and magnetic tapes only delayed the real exploration of the moon - now no one is ready to return to the moon. For the same reason, the construction of the ISS is so slow and the development of the entire astronautics is slowing down - all the prizes were already taken in the sixties. It seems that space will remain an uninhabited desert... even NASA abandoned manned missions and switched to using lunar rover technology.

The fourth space race: what is behind the scenes of the space race?

It seems that we have come to the end of our journey, but there is clearly some understatement. Something important is missing, and that important thing is propaganda.

I already said above that the entire space project was built based on the television picture. But this is not the first time that the topic of space has appeared in government propaganda.

27. All Hollywood directors from Kubrick to Lucas were devoted fans of Soviet science fiction. They watched films about the pioneers’ journey to other planets thousands of times and made their own films in imitation of Soviet propaganda. This well-known fact now seems incredible, but all the key American films about space have a very obvious Soviet prototype.

Kubrick shot his Space Odyssey in frame-by-frame imitation of the Soviet blockbuster Road to the Stars, and Star Wars is based on Lucas's favorite film, Planet of Storms. For example Chewbacca from star wars- this is a modified Russian word Dog and so on.

28. Were Soviet filmmakers more skillful than their Hollywood colleagues? Of course yes, because Hollywood itself is a Russian product, it was created by Stanislavsky, who wrote his “system” specifically for the Americans. But the matter here is still somewhat deeper - in the communist ideology itself.

29. It is mistakenly believed that the birthplace of communism is Germany and England, where all the red leaders lived and worked. Like everything cultural in Europe, communism was invented in France. You will laugh, but initially communism was a literary project at the level of Superman comics - the ideas of social equality and justice in themselves were not particularly exciting, so they were wrapped in a wrapper space travel with blasters and beautiful aliens who will be taught earthly love. In general, everything that teenagers love.

The main body of texts was written by people whose names can be read on the stele near the walls of the Kremlin: Charles Fourier, Auguste Comte, Proudhon, Pierre Leroux and of course my beloved Saint-Simon - an ever-beggar crazy blogger who went for very crazy ideas like Newton's church, which should replace Catholicism and spread to the entire universe. People fly to the planet and the first thing they do is build a church of science named after Newton. All this under the guise of a sexual revolution with common wives and sexual adventures.

As a result, by the 1830s, “Saint-Simonism” had become all the rage. Being a socialist was as cool as being a Beatles fan a century later. In Moscow, a girl could give herself up only for one convincing hint of belonging to the international. Herzen, Belinsky, Ogarev, Anninsky were all devoted fans of communism and laid the cornerstone of socialist ideas in Russia.

30. Stella to the ideologists of communism in the Alexander Garden - now you know why it was so important until the other day it was demolished.

This is how a strong connection between socialism and space arose. This is precisely why the Soviet government was always tinkering with space, planetariums and Tsiolkovsky, and made a mountain of films about the conquest of interplanetary space. This was her invisible backbone.

But in the same way, the socialist core was forever entrenched in science fiction. You will not be able to come across a single work of science fiction where you do not stumble upon socialist ideas. Even if it is a gloomy post-apocalypse like Fallout or a futuristic Avatar, everywhere you will see the kind squint of Grandfather Lenin with freedom-equality-brotherhood.

It’s not surprising that the socialist space program turned out to be better than the capitalist one - it’s just that it’s already two hundred years old. The space fashion of the 1960s is just an echo and shadow of the space hysteria of the early 19th century.

Fifth space: the speed of light is not a redistribution?

All that remains is to look back at the fourteen previous pages and ask the question – what’s next? Spacewalk, orbital station and flight to the moon - is this the limit? This is not even real space, but “near-Earth space”, and what is there, outside the solar system?

31. In the last decade there has been a real revolution in astronomy, equal to the revolution in physics at the beginning of the last century. Moreover, as in the case of the theory of the atomic nucleus, people have not yet realized the full depth of the change in their view of the world. Even specialist astronomers are just beginning to get used to the new picture of the world. The result of this new picture was the 2006 Astronomical Congress, which adopted seemingly far-fetched decisions on a new classification of planets. After all, what difference does it make whether Pluto is considered a planet or just a “double planetoid”?

But we are talking here about changing the entire picture of the world. Previously it was believed that the solar system was the Star itself and the planets circling in close orbits. And somewhere very far away, 40 trillion kilometers away, is the nearest star Proxima Centauri; it probably has the same planets in small orbits. But between the two solar systems is the emptiness of space.

32. Everything changed on November 14, 2003 with the discovery of the planet Sedna in the solar system. The distance to the planet was 14 million kilometers. This fit into the upper limit of the solar system. However, the researchers were further horrified to discover that the aphelion of Sedna’s orbit (maximum distance from the Sun) is 930 AU (139 billion kilometers). The planet's orbital period with such an elongated orbit is more than 10,000 years.

Sedna's habitat is traditionally called the Kuiper Belt. Initially it was believed that this is the location of the bulk of the solar system's comets, that is, objects ranging in size from several tens of meters to several kilometers. Currently, more than 400 objects have been opened in this area, the dimensions of which exceed 200 km. According to modern estimates, there are 35,000 objects larger than 100 km in the Kuiper belt, and the total number of bodies, according to experts, is estimated at several billion.

In the middle of the 20th century, the hypothetical area where comets were located was moved further, to the so-called. "Oort Cloud". It was believed that in this hypothetical spherical shell surrounding the Solar system at a distance of about one light years, contain billions of comets with a total mass equal to the mass of the Earth. The cloud's coordinates were calculated speculatively by extrapolating the trajectories of known comets.

What is the hypothetical limit of disturbance celestial body The sun? This distance is exactly halfway between the Sun and Proxima. This is the true size of the grandiose solar system, which has yet to be studied by stunned humanity.

33. Our neighbors

That is, the very first serious study of our own star system radically changed our understanding of the universe - it turned out that space is evenly seeded with matter, only here and there illuminated by the lights of stars. And our own solar system is by no means independent, but is physically united with nearby stars forming a single planetary system.

From here there are two conclusions: space is saturated with planets. Star systems are much closer than we thought and common objects often run between them.

From which it follows that space is filled with life and makes contacts between civilizations possible at the most primitive stages of development, when they are still of interest and nutritional value for each other. You can reach your neighbors even on a ship with the most primitive nuclear engine.

34. Main nuclear engine of US ships NERVA

And such spaceships have already been laid down. The program for their construction is the second bottom of the space race. If you've played Civilization, you'll know what I mean. For example, GPS and Glonass are subprojects of “nuclear space”, because for orientation in deep space it was planned to use pulsars (stars giving constant radio pulses), for the needs of the military, this idea was converted in 1973 into a navigation system for thirty satellites in medium orbit near the earth.

In the 1960s, both superpowers designed and began building the first starships capable of reaching Alpha Centauri, but both programs were unexpectedly terminated immediately after positive test results of the NERV and RD-0410 engines. Apparently they postponed it until better times, but already in the 1970s the USSR built a series of military “legend” guidance satellites with low-power nuclear installations on board. And apparently we are still significantly ahead of America in this area, it’s a pity that the area is classified and what is actually happening there is unknown.

35. The latest public information on this topic dates back to 2011 and reports a new attempt by the Americans to enter into a partnership with Roscosmos in the field of nuclear engines. However, already in March 2013, an interview with Denis Kovalevich, head of the Skolkovo space cluster, began to circulate online, in which he said that the development of a nuclear power plant is being carried out without the involvement of foreign specialists, since there are many dual technologies there. “This is a Russian project,” said D. Kovalevich.

36. It became like this beginning of XXI century. We began the 20th century with an attempt at flight and quickly changed our understanding of the world. Our century begins with a revolution in astronomy and the construction of real starships. So is the theme of space dead?

I think it's just beginning.